They are better than I expected on the performance, but with GTX 480 SLI matched only by an industrial vacuum cleaner for noise and power consumption, I think I'll stay with my (relatively efficient) pair of 4870x2s for now.

(One thing really surprised me - I wasn't expecting the power consumption to be as monstrous as the reviews so far are indicating)

yeah won't be buying it either. sure the physx/hair tesselation demos look amazing but only the handful softwares will ever support them for a while. (just look at physx and how many games make use of them...).

Also this depends from a person to person but being power efficient and being SILENT is really important for me, and HD5000 really delivered that. So i'll be purchasing HD5870 instead!

Do you think the price for HD5850/5870 even drop? cause some 5870s are already $100 below GTX480. After seeing the reviews for GTX480 I'm kinda starting to doubt that HD5800's prices will go down.

Amazing. HD 5870 and HD 5850 prices were originally meant to be $350 and $250, and with the GTX 480 launching at $499, you could've got two HD 5850s when they were first launched, which perform the same as an HD 5970... which beats the GTX 480 by quite a bit.

If I had Fermi... well... I'd probably shoot some lame video going like this, with the appropriate costumes and all:

I just realized the release was the 26th so i woke up today and it just slammed into my head so i went on thier website to check them out and see thier spec's....

They come at a good price, I am definitely going to pick one of them up They look Awesome. And it will be a huge jump for me since I am still playing on my 8800GTS 640MB which maxes almost out mostly everything at 1080p but ever since i connected a second monitor it's harder for it to handle it and I honestly just want to buy one to play around on crysis fully maxed out on 1080p to feed my eyes

I checked out some websites and it seems like the 480 is significantly more powerful then ATI's most powerful single GPU, 5870. Correct me if i am wrong.

Also, I have an 850watt PSU so i think it will handle this card perfectly fine.? I don't know if its enough to SLI them but one card should be handled well.

I just can't even imagine how badly these cards will rape new titles on maxed settings and on ridiculous resolutions.

Anandtech showed the 480 in sli, it pulled 668W load, (probably 666 since it will surely blow up) and 851W max ... so an 850W will handle it, perfectly? NO. This card is definately the return of the Nvacuum, one loud mofo.

Just because you have $500 to spend on a card does NOT mean you want to spend more. I'd get a Waterblocked HD5870 for $500, and OC the *** out of it to beat the GTX480 easily. All the while being silent and cool, 8).

Thermal paste does nothing to reduce the heat of the cooler itself. It only facilitates heat transfer between the chip and the cooler. You will still need to dissipate the same 300W, so fan speed will still need to be very high.

Well, i don't know, maybe its hot and loud, but if it runs and does well in performance, i'll find a way to tweak or change something to suit myself. I'm getting it or maybe if they get some more 400's cards in the near future, i'll get those. They sound like awesome cards.

At the launch event they had 2 480's in sli in one computer and while they were both putting out a fair bit of heat, the overall temps in coretemp and gpu-z seemed stable and not really as bad as everyone is saying.

Well, i don't know, maybe its hot and loud, but if it runs and does well in performance, i'll find a way to tweak or change something to suit myself. I'm getting it or maybe if they get some more 400's cards in the near future, i'll get those. They sound like awesome cards.

It's first gen hardware mate and whilst I'm not going to be buying into it (for my own reasons) I don't have a problem or intend to belittle those that will, I shall however be sitting back and watching to see if any problem patterns start to appear.

At the launch event they had 2 480's in sli in one computer and while they were both putting out a fair bit of heat, the overall temps in coretemp and gpu-z seemed stable and not really as bad as everyone is saying.

Whilst the thermal management may seem impressive at the moment (and it is) only time and some serious gaming sessions will really test it's mettle.

One can only hope that NV will bring Fermi from strength to strength with chipset revisions etc in the future.

Well if they stick with it and after the time and money invested there is no reason to think otherwise, then as the GPU yields and drivers mature that should bring better performance from some of the later iterations and by the time the 2nd gen Fermi cards are ready, DX11 games may be more popular with the devs and if they are tessellation heavy then Nvidia cards may be the better option by then.